Looking for 1/16 note help

[Sara Hood]

In my most recent lesson, my teacher said, "Basically, you learned to tongue wrong." (single tonguing) What he meant was that I was using moving too much of my tongue to articulate short notes like the 1/16, and it was interfering with my ability to keep them even in length and make speed when playing them. Such notes should use just the tip of the tongue to break up the air stream. So I am looking for videos that concentrate on clean articulation and technique. Something that will help me develop better articulation habits and get this tonguing with just the tip under my belt .

I would work with my teacher on this, but he is on holiday break until mid-January. He told me to make this one of the things I work on in the interim. That is why I am here looking for pointers and demonstration videos.

- Sara

[John Morgan]

Sara - this might be useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdCd_ILXdU8

[davewerden]

A common problem with tonguing is that some folks try to use their tongue to start AND stop the note. Usually we should only start the note with our tongue. Think of a half note that starts with an accent at mf and then tapers off to silence gradually. That is a slow-motion representation of the way we should be using our tongue on each 16th. For staccato notes the taper happens very quickly. During a string of 16ths, your tongue need only start each note. That action will automatically stop the previous note.

Beyond that, here is some advice I put together on using the Arban single-tongue exercises:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ulf3qoo2zKg

[davewerden]

You raise a good point, which I tried to address above (about releasing notes). But I decided that would make a good single-topic video, and here it is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAtV6lkzO_U

[Sara Hood]

My issue does not seem to come from using my tongue to stop or release the notes. Fortunately, that is one bad habit I do not seem to have.

I do have the issue that my 1/16 notes are not uniform in length. I tend to make the first one a hair too long, or I end up doing something resembling a swing style pattern, rather than an even quarter of a beat each. I can verbally count them evenly, but when I go to play (mouthpiece and horn attached and up to the lips), the articulation is muddy and not a regular subdivision. I am working with a metronome. In addition, I am not playing at the target tempo. I know that if I can get the notes to sound correctly, I can build speed from there.

My instructor thought that I was basically moving my whole tongue forward and back to play each note. Rather than starting the note by just flicking the tip of the tongue into the air stream and using behind the tops of the back of the front teeth on top as the place I am tonguing against.

I have some practice exercises where I can see and listen to someone else playing them and try to imitate what I hear. While verbally counting or simply articulating on the mouthpiece (no buzz) along, I can line up with the demo. But when I try on my own or with the horn attached, the same rhythms do not come out.

Note, all of this is for single tonguing. I think that he wants me to have a clean, reasonably fast, single tongue before we try anything with multi-tonguing.

- Sara

PS and question for Dave Werden - In your first video in this thread, you referred to some Arban's exercise numbers. I have the Hooten & Marotta edition of the Arbans book. But it does not seem to match up to the exercise numbers you gave. Number 19, for example, definitely does not match what you played. There is no section specifically devoted to single tonguing, from what I can see in the table of contents. Are you certain about the exercise numbers?

[davewerden]

PS and question for Dave Werden - In your first video in this thread, you referred to some Arban's exercise numbers. I have the Hooten & Marotta edition of the Arbans book. But it does not seem to match up to the exercise numbers you gave. Number 19, for example, definitely does not match what you played. There is no section specifically devoted to single tonguing, from what I can see in the table of contents. Are you certain about the exercise numbers?

I'm sure that's what my book has, and also the online version I found in public domain. Below are 2 screen shots from the PD version. The first shows how the exercises I'm talking about start. The 2nd pic shows the exercise that is actually at the top of the page (#18), which ends a series of previous tonguing exercises.

EXERCISE 19



PREVIOUS EXERCISE (18), which was not part of my video

[Sara Hood]

Thank you for checking and for the screen shots. I found the exercises you were referring to (smile).
- Sara